The Walk Home
by The Gong O Doom
Summary: A 'deleted/missing scene" from Sesason 4's The Son episode
1. Chapter 1

**The Walk Home**

Author's note: This is a 'missing scene' from the Season 4 Episode _The Son_, sparked by a PM **Surly Coach** sent me. My earlier and since unfairly banned self-posted and then took it down, it's back with an addition or two.

I demand **GUSHING PRAISE AND ENDLESS FAWNING LOVE IN YOUR REVIEWS.**

Or you can say dogs wouldn't piss on it.

"Matt. Matt!"

He heard Coach Taylor calling his name but Matt kept running. That was the only thought in his mind. Keep running. Away from Dillon. Away from Coach. Away from Julie. Away from Grandma. Away from his dad. Away from everything. Just keep on running forever, into the darkness. But he stopped and stood, chest heaving, sobs wracking his body, tears streaming down his cheeks and into his mouth.

Eric jogged over to him and stood there hands on his hips until Matt got his sobbing under control. "I'm going to walk to you home."

Matt stood there for a few moments, then nodded his head and set off down the street with Eric at his side. As they passed under a streetlight Eric glanced back and saw Tami and Julie looking at them from the front porch. He reached over and put his arm around Matt's shoulder. They walked for a few minutes, listening to the breeze rustle the leaves and the crickets singing.

"Coach, will you tell Mrs. Taylor and Julie how sorry I am for what just happened? I'm really sorry."

"Aww hell, you're a'ight. You didn't do anything wrong."

"Yes sir, but will you tell them I'm sorry and apologize to them for me. I mean, I'll say I'm sorry when I see them tomorrow, but there was no excuse for what I did. I didn't mean to scare Julie or Mrs. Taylor like that."

Eric stopped. "Hey. I need you to hear this. You did _nothing _wrong. You understand me. Nothing wrong. I half expected you to throw your plate against the wall and even that would have been understandable given the circumstances. You did nothing wrong, you hear me?"

"I hear you, but will you please just apologize for me and them how sorry I am?"

Eric could tell Matt wasn't going to let it go so he said, "Yes, I'll tell them." They walked for a few minutes; Eric glanced up at the sky and then said "Where were you?"

"We…we were at Dillon at the field."

"You were at _my_ field? You and who else? You didn't leave my lights on did you?"

"No sir. We weren't at East Dillon, we were at Dillon. Me and Landry and Tim and Billy. But yeah, we left the lights on."

"Good." Eric grinned and Matt did too when he saw Eric's face. That made up a little for Joe and JD's showing up at the wake with that ridiculous fruit basket. "Tim still has the key to the press box."

"You gave him a key?"

"No, I think it was Buddy. I was tired of having him complain to me because the lock or the door was busted or that the lights had been on all night. Or that I'd left beer cans all over the place. I did tell Tim that I didn't mind if he was at the field but to try and remember to turn the lights off."

"I guess it'll be two out of three tonight."

"That'll have to do. I'm glad that you made it to our house and that you and the others are safe, especially Heckle and Jeckyl. Tim and Billy Riggins." Eric shook his head. "I'm just happy that it was just y'all out on the field drinking beer. Those two have a horrible habit of not thinking things through, but blowing past the consequences at high speed and if there's a horribly dumb idea floating around, you can be sure it'll land in one of their heads and be put into practice before long."

"That wasn't the only place we were. We…uh….we….we went, well I started saying how I have to give a eulogy tomorrow and how I don't even know if my dad is really in the coffin, you know. Because I've heard and read some stories about people faking their deaths and how the coffin is filled with rocks or sandbags or something and the person goes off and is living on some island in the South Pacific or starting a brand new life in a new state on the other side of the country or something. And Tim said something like, 'Well, you're dad's at the funeral home, right? Let's go check it out and see.'" Eric shook his head and hissed softly. "No, coach, it's okay. I'd been thinking about for a while, a couple of days and I guess I wanted to know. So that's what we did. We kind of broke in to the place, but the guy, the undertaker was pretty nice about it." Matt stopped walked over and sat on the curb, so Eric sat beside him. "He didn't want to open the casket, but we…I was pretty insistent." Matt swallowed a few times. "You know what an IED is coach?"

"It's like a land mine, except civilians make them I think."

"Yeah, like an amateur land mine. I guess that's where most of the injuries and deaths are coming from now over there." Matt lay back on the grass. "That's what my dad was hit by. Killed by. So….the undertaker unlocked the casket and I looked."


	2. Chapter 2

Tami and Julie stood on the front porch watching Matt and Eric walk down the street. Julie was crying as Tami took her hand and sat her down on the couch.

"I…what…I need to do something. I need to do something for Matt. What do I do? I need to help him." Julie made a move to get up but Tami gently pushed her back down.

"You're helping him just by being with him. Sitting with him at his house during the wake. Inviting him over to dinner tonight. Even telling him he didn't have to eat if he didn't feel like it. And your dad is making sure he gets home okay. But….honey this is such a hard thing. I think it's the hardest thing we go through in life, when someone we love, a member of our family dies."

"But Matt said that he hates his dad and they sure didn't seem to care much for each other when his dad came back a couple years ago. He just said that he hates him."

"Yes, he did, but he loves him. In his heart, in his soul he loves him. And if you noticed, Matt also hates things that other people do. I'm sure he hates some things that your dad has put him through or made him do, like when we were going to move to Austin. He hates some things about his grandmother even though he loves her dearly. And he hates that he hates those things and people. So like he said, he tried to take that and focus it on his dad instead of letting it out on the people he cared about. Not that he didn't care about his dad but," Tami sighed, "it's a complicated thing. Matt hasn't had the easiest time growing up with his Grandmother raising him while his parents were…"

"They abandoned him."

"You could say that, but I think there's more to it than that, don't you? Some people meet and hang out and fall in love and get married but then they find out that well, it's doesn't entirely fit together for them. So they separate. Sometimes they've had kids and sometimes they haven't. Matt was lucky that his Grandmother was there and that she's the person she is. And you know what, I don't know what to do right now, really. And neither does your Dad. Besides just being there for him and loving him. And sometimes you can do things for him. Like that funeral director." Tami shook her head. "Jackass."

"Something happened at the funeral home this afternoon?"

Tami hesitated. "Well, it's a business like any other, but they can be just as….I guess slimy as car salesman, like Buddy Garrity, though he's more of a smooth talker than slimy. This guy was going on and on about special military caskets and cars to ride in to the funeral and Matt just sat there and….well, he had no idea what was going on, but why should he? I guess if you're in the military and you die, there's like a funeral bonus that they give the surviving family members. But Matt's dad's funeral was going to cost nearly eight thousand dollars," Julie's eyes widened, "and there was all this stuff like the cars I mentioned earlier and I could tell that Matt was a little over his head so I told him that he could go outside and I'd finish up with the director and I did." Tami sighed and pushed her hair back. "I'd like to see if Matt would see a grief counselor, but the ones in town are a little too spacey. " She looked at Julie. "Do you think he'd be okay with seeing a counselor or therapist?"

Julie chewed her lip. "I guess, but I think maybe you should talk with him about it first."

"Well, would it be okay if it was the three of us talking about it?"

"I….I don't know. I guess, but I don't want to just spring it on him. Maybe I could talk with him about it first. And….a counselor or therapist is like a hundred dollars an hour, right? I don't know that Matt or his family can afford that for long."

"Well, even just a couple of sessions can do some good and maybe I could talk with him sometimes."

"Mom, come on."

"I'm sorry, hon, I'm just thinking out loud. I'm not saying I would do it, just that it's a possibility."


	3. Chapter 3

Eric lay on the grass beside Matt feeling the dew soak his pants and shirt and hair, looking up at the sky. He didn't want to hear what he knew was coming; he started to get up, but dug his fingers into the lawn. If nothing else, he could do this for Matt; he _would_ do this for Matt.

He and Tami had talked about it the other night, talked about grief. Not so much the five stages of it, but about how you helped other people deal with it. You could hold a person's hand for hours, as Julie had been doing, or hug them while they cried until they were dried of tears, or make food for them, more food than they could eat in six months, or just be near them.

And the thing of it was, none of it did a damn thing for the person actually grieving, for the person who had suffered or was suffering from the tragedy. They were the ones who had to stare that tragedy in the face, they had to do the work of grieving, what Tami called, "_the inside stuff, the soul stuff"_ by themselves. _"The only way out was through, but no one else can do the work for you."_ He had told Tami Julie's comment about Matt and how "he was trying," and Tami had furrowed her brow and turned away for a minute. He had asked her what the problem was, and when she turned back she was wiping at her eyes with her hands. She said she was worried, because she knew there was something building up in Matt, and it was going to come out and she was worried exactly what that coming out might entail. Eric had said that people grieve in different ways, like in that Mary Tyler Moore episode where the guy had gotten killed by the elephant; Mary had started laughing at the memorial service. Not everyone cried or sobbed, some people laughed, or ran an ultra-marathon or did nothing but eat until they gained 150 pounds.

Tami had laughed, well it was more of a half laugh; half sob, and said that was true, we all grieve differently, but she was worried about Matt. Because of everything the boy had dealt with, the _weight,_ the _burdens_ he'd been carrying since he was old enough to walk. Because she loved Matt not quite like a son, but damn near to one. Because Julie loved Matt. Because Matt loved Julie. Because he, Eric loved Matt.

That gave him pause. He had started to say something, then stopped and got a glass of water from the bathroom. He did love Matt. And it was different from how he loved and cared about all of the other boys who played for him. It was why he had been so angry, enraged actually, when he had gone to the hospital two years ago and found Matt drunk and his grandmother hurt. Not that he had ever told Matt not to drink; he had never told _ANY_ of his players that, because this was Texas and well, this was Texas. But he was just as angry when Julie came home drunk with Tim Riggins.

Eric lay there on the grass, and thought about how he had pushed Matt over the past few years, how unfair he had been to him really, with the whole Voodoo debacle, and Matt's having to stand there in Eric's office and have Buddy Garrity barge in and go off on a rant about how shitty a QB Matt was, and Buddy knew damn well that Matt was standing there having every word tear a little more off of him and Eric did nothing. Oh sure, he would eventually, sigh and grimace and tell Buddy that he had actual work to do or a practice to run or a meeting to hold or film to watch and shoo him out the door, but he had never apologized to Matt for those times. Never. And there had been far too many moments like that. Eric had cornered Buddy later and torn into him, saying that if he wanted to rip somebody he was going to rip Eric, that was fine he had no problem with that, but saying that stuff about Matt while Matt was in the room, saying that about a 17 year old teenager, no, that wasn't gonna happen. Eric thought he had extracted a promise from Buddy to apologize to Matt, but he didn't recall it ever happening.

"It was like I said back at your house, about his not having a face? He didn't anymore. I mean, they had done their best to fix him up, but you could tell his jaw was gone, pretty much the left side of his head was gone. I guess that was why they laid him out the way they did, with his left side on farthest away from where people would be if the casket was open." Matt stood up and started walking down the street.

"Coach, am…am I wrong for hating my dad? I mean, I guess I didn't hate him so much that I wanted him to die….well I guess when I was a little kid after he and mom left I hoped he'd die, I guess I hoped they'd both die. I mean I was so glad to see him when he came home three years ago, but….pretty soon it was just like it was when I was six or seven, him being sullen and angry all the time and yelling."

"Is that the only thing you remember about him, him being angry and yelling?"

"Pretty much, well, I remember him hitting my mom a couple of times. That was a month or so before they both left."

Eric glanced over at Matt. He'd heard bits and pieces about Matt's father the past few years, mostly from Julie, but there had been a couple of occasions when something about Matt's parents had popped out of his grandmother's mouth. And Tami had spent some time with Shelby. He knew Matt's parent's relationship was best described as 'stormily chaotic', but not to the point of hitting each other.

"Did your dad ever hit you? Or was it just your mom?"

Now it was Matt who looked over at Eric. "Yeah, he hit me. I mean, he _spanked_ me. My mom did too. But it wasn't like they did every day, just because, they did it because I did something wrong or something bad. Just like you and Mrs. Coach spanked Julie."

"What? Where did you hear that?" Which was a dumb question, because of course Julie had told him, Matt wouldn't have heard it from Tami.

"Julie and I were talking after my dad left for the Army again. I told her how it was for me growing up and we told each other our spanking stories." Matt chuckled. "It's a little funny, Julie said that you or Mrs. Coach would say they '_needed to have a little discussion outside with you and it did not involve talking.'_ But that was it, just spanking, never anything else. With my dad and mom…. It was just slapping, well, not 'just,' because that's bad enough, but he never punched her, not that I know."

"Julie needs to keep some things to herself. Well, next time you're over I'll be sure to let you see the pictures of her when she was a lot younger." Eric paused. "You remember when your dad came home a couple years ago and the two of you got into it after a game? And you came over to our house for a while. You and I were out in the backyard and you said pretty much the same thing you've been saying, that you hated your dad. And I told you then, to knock that kind of talk off, that you were mad and upset and that was fine, it was okay for you to be upset or angry, but that you had to try and see that your dad was trying, he was….I guess he was trying to fix things or make up for him and your mom not being in your life since you were seven years old. That's what people do; they try and fix things, relationships. And sometimes they can, but a lot of times and I think this is the case with your dad, there's just too much stuff that's built up and been piled on, that you just, you just can't forgive them all the way, not the way that they want.

"The thing is you do love your dad. What happened at our house earlier showed that. So did you going to the field with your friends and….going to the funeral home. I think that more than anything shows that you do love your dad. Now that doesn't mean that part of you doesn't hate him. You _can_ have both of those emotions at once for something; it's a question of which one is stronger.

"But to love your dad, you also have to be willing to forgive him, and that can be, hell it is, a hard, hard thing. It might be the hardest thing you can do, because you have to show empathy and kindness and love to the thing you hate or don't like. The important thing to know is that there is no weakness in forgiving. It doesn't mean you are weak if you forgive someone, it's the opposite, that you are strong. And one thing I know about you and that I've learned about you and that I know about you is how strong you are. In your heart."

Eric looked down the street and saw the porch light at Matt's house. They kept walking, not saying anything, until they were on the sidewalk next to Shelby's car. The front door opened and Shelby came down to the sidewalk. She hugged Matt, and then hugged Coach Taylor, which he was _not_ expecting. She looked from Matt to Eric. "How are you guys doing?"

"We…. we're, I don't honestly know. It's a nice night for a walk, and we talked about some things. I'm sorry that we're late."

Shelby smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I called and Tami told me y'all were going to be walking."

"How's Lorraine doing?"

"She's holding steady. She knows what's going on, but she's still fuzzy. I did manage to get her to take a sleeping pill, and she's been down for a couple of hours. Coach, would you mind taking some food home with you. The fridge, freezer and pantries are all stuffed and I've still got stuff laying on the counters and tables. If you and yours don't eat it, I don't know maybe you could have a picnic for the team."

Matt snickered at the idea of Eric spreading a checkered blanket out on the East Dillon field and putting a couple of baskets of food down. Eric started to glare, but smiled. "No, I wouldn't bring a blanket, Tami might but I wouldn't. I think I'll take you up on that offer, some of my players, well, it's East Dillon."

Shelby nodded. "Matt and I will put some things in a couple of bags and maybe you or Tami or Julie can stop by the next few days and get some more. And I'm gonna drive you home." She turned and went inside.

"I'll be there in a minute." Matt looked up and down the street, and then at Eric. "Thank you, for walking with me. If you hadn't come after me, I….I guess I might still be running. And tell Mrs. Coach I'm sorry about….you know."

"I'm glad I was there, and I'm glad I'm here now. I know and Tami and Julie know that you….tend to hold things in, which is okay, but what's going on right now, well Tami and I, hell all of us are worried about you. We all care about you, and if you want to talk about something, about anything, or you want to get out on the field and throw the ball around, you let me or Julie or Tami know. You can call anytime; I don't care if it's the middle of the school day or three in the morning. And I'd really like you and your mom and Lorraine to come over for dinner one of the next few days, okay?"

"Yes sir. Thank you again."

Matt started to turn, but Eric caught him by the shoulder and hugged him, saying, "I'm very proud of you." When the hug broke up, Matt walked onto the porch as Eric said, "Tell Shelby I'll be there in a minute." Matt nodded and went inside.

Eric stepped out into the middle of the street, took in a deep breath, held it and slowly let it out, then wiped his eyes. "It's a damn cruel world sometimes."

**THE END**


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